Week 3

Flow – The psychology of

Optimal Experience
Recommended Reading

 Book
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalhyi
Definition

When people are engaged in challenging but controllable tasks that are
intrinsically motivating they experience a unique psychological state,
referred to as Flow (Csikszentmihalyi and Csikszentmihalyi, 1988; Csikszentmihalyi, 1990,
1997; Nakamura and Csikszentmihalyi, 2002)
 A HISTORY OF FLOW

 No one invented a particular set of exercises that can make you enter the flow state.
Flow always existed. The world has known that painters, sculptors, musicians, and
many other artists oftentimes lose themselves so deep in their work that they forget
eating, drinking and even sleeping.

 In 1975, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced me-highee cheek-sent-me-highee)

scientifically discovered, researched and brought the concept of flow into public
limelight. The Hungarian-American psychology professor and his colleagues
discovered flow — an optimal state of happiness these people were entering and
working from — when they were asking themselves, “What makes these artists get
lost in their work?”
Where does flow come from?
 ATTENTION AS PSYCHIC ENERGY
 Information enters consciousness either because we intend to focus attention on it or as
a result of attentional habits based on biological or social instructions. For instance,
driving down the highway, we pass hundreds of cars without actually being aware of
them. Their shape and color might register for a fraction of a second, and then they are
immediately forgotten. But occasionally we notice a particular vehicle, perhaps
because it is swerving unsteadily between lanes, or because it is moving very slowly, or
because of its unusual appearance. The image of the unusual car enters the focus of
consciousness, and we become aware of it. In the mind the visual information about the
car (e.g., “it is swerving”) gets related to information about other errant cars stored in
memory, to determine into which category the present instance fits. Is this an
inexperienced driver, a drunken driver, a momentarily distracted but competent driver?
As soon as the event is matched to an already known class of events, it is identified.
 Now it must be evaluated: Is this something to worry about? If the answer is
yes, then we must decide on an appropriate course of action: Should we speed
up, slow down, change lanes, stop and alert the highway patrol?
 All these complex mental operations must be completed in a few seconds,
sometimes in a fraction of a second. While forming such a judgment seems to
be a lightning-fast reaction, it does take place in real time. And it does not
happen automatically: there is a distinct process that makes such reactions
possible, a process called attention. It is attention that selects the relevant bits
of information from the potential millions of bits available. It takes attention
to retrieve the appropriate references from memory, to evaluate the event, and
then to choose the right thing to do.
 Despite its great powers, attention cannot step beyond the limits already
described. It cannot notice or hold in focus more information than can be
processed simultaneously. Retrieving information from memory storage and
bringing it into the focus of awareness, comparing information, evaluating,
deciding—all make demands on the mind’s limited processing capacity. For
example, the driver who notices the swerving car will have to stop talking on
his cellular phone if he wants to avoid an accident.
 Some people learn to use this priceless resource efficiently, while others waste
it.
 The mark of a person who is in control of consciousness is the ability to focus
attention at will, to be oblivious to distractions, to concentrate for as long as it
takes to achieve a goal, and not longer. And the person who can do this usually
enjoys the normal course of everyday life.
Psychic Entropy: Disorder in
Consciousness
 One of the main forces that affects consciousness adversely is psychic disorder—that is,
information that conflicts with existing intentions, or distracts us from carrying them out. We give
this condition many names, depending on how we experience it: pain, fear, rage, anxiety, or
jealousy. All these varieties of disorder force attention to be diverted to undesirable objects,
leaving us no longer free to use it according to our preferences. Psychic energy becomes unwieldy
and ineffective.
 Every piece of information we process gets evaluated for its bearing on the self. Does it threaten
our goals, does it support them, or is it neutral?
 News of the fall of the stock market will upset the banker, but it might reinforce the sense of self
of the political activist. A new piece of information will either create disorder in consciousness, by
getting us all worked up to face the threat, or it will reinforce our goals, thereby freeing up psychic
energy.
Enter the Self
 The self is no ordinary piece of information. In fact, it contains everything else that has passed through
consciousness: all the memories, actions, desires, pleasures, and pains are included in it. And more
than anything else, the self represents the hierarchy of goals that we have built up, bit by bit, over the
years.
 The self of the political activist may become indistinguishable from his ideology, the self of the banker
may become wrapped up in his investments.
 Ordinarily, we do not think of our self in this way. At any given time, we are usually aware of only a
tiny part of it, as when we become conscious of how we look, of what impression we are making, or of
what we really would like to do if we could. We most often associate our self with our body, though
sometimes we extend its boundaries to identify it with a car, house, or family.
 Yet however much we are aware of it, the self is in many ways the most important element of
consciousness, for it represents symbolically all of consciousness’s other contents, as well as the
pattern of their interrelations.
Flow: Order in Consciousness
 The opposite state from the condition of psychic entropy is optimal experience.
 When the information that keeps coming into awareness is congruent with goals,
psychic energy flows effortlessly.
 There is no need to worry, no reason to question one’s adequacy. But whenever
one does stop to think about oneself, the evidence is encouraging: “You are
doing all right.”
 The positive feedback strengthens the self, and more attention is freed to deal
with the outer and the inner environment.
 For Pam Davis it is much easier to achieve this harmonious, effortless
state when she works. As a young lawyer in a small partnership, she is
fortunate to be involved in complex, challenging cases. She spends
hours in the library, chasing down references and outlining possible
courses of action for the senior partners of the firm to follow. Often her
concentration is so intense that she forgets to have lunch, and by the
time she realizes that she is hungry it is dark outside. While she is
immersed in her job every piece of information fits: even when she is
temporarily frustrated, she knows what causes the frustration, and she
believes that eventually the obstacle can be overcome.
Reversal Theory (Apter, 2001).
 Means-Ends - The two states in the first pair are called "Telic" (or "Serious") and
"Paratelic" (or “Spontaneous") and refer to whether one is motivated by achievement
and future goals, or the enjoyment of process in the moment.
 This pair of metamotivational states comprise two opposite ways of experiencing
means and ends.
 In the telic state, the individual evaluates the activity in terms of how far it leads
towards the achievement of important goals in the future.
 In the paratelic state the ongoing activity is evaluated in terms of the pleasure it
gives to the individual at the moment in question.
 The telic state tends to lead to planning ahead and the paratelic to
playfulness/enjoyment/spontaneity.
THE AUTOTELIC EXPERIENCE
 The key element of an optimal experience is that it is an end in itself. Even if initially
undertaken for other reasons, the activity that consumes us becomes intrinsically
rewarding.
 Surgeons speak of their work: “It is so enjoyable that I would do it even if I didn’t
have to.” Sailors say: “I am spending a lot of money and time on this boat, but it is
worth it—nothing quite compares with the feeling I get when I am out sailing.”
 The term “autotelic” derives from two Greek words, auto meaning self, and telos
meaning goal. It refers to a self-contained activity, one that is done not with the
expectation of some future benefit, but simply because the doing itself is the reward.
 Playing the stock market in order to make money is not an autotelic experience; but
playing it in order to prove one’s skill at foretelling future trends is—even though
the outcome in terms of dollars and cents is exactly the same.
 Teaching children in order to turn them into good citizens is not autotelic, whereas
teaching them because one enjoys interacting with children is.
 What transpires in the two situations is identical; what differs is that when the
experience is autotelic, the person is paying attention to the activity for its own
sake; when it is not, the attention is focused on its consequences.
 Most things we do are neither purely autotelic nor purely exotelic (as we shall call
activities done for external reasons only), but are a combination
of the two. Surgeons usually enter into their long period of training because of
exotelic expectations: to help people, to make money, to achieve prestige. If they
are lucky, after a while they begin to enjoy their work, and then surgery becomes to
a large extent also autotelic.
Note!
 Importantly, one must be aware of the potentially addictive power of flow.
We should reconcile ourselves to the fact that nothing in the world is
entirely positive; every power can be misused. Love may lead to cruelty,
science can create destruction, technology unchecked produces pollution.
 Therefore, optimal experience is a form of energy, and energy can be used
either to help or to destroy. Fire warms or burns; atomic energy can
generate electricity or it can obliterate the world. Energy is power, but
power is only a means. The goals to which it is applied can make life
either richer or more painful.
Flow Diagram
Explanation of the Flow Diagram

 When the challenge is too high and the skill level too low, people get
anxious and tend to freeze up or flee the challenge.
 When the challenge is low and the skill level is high, people tend to
get bored with what they are doing and perhaps sleepwalk through
their work.
 When the skill level is high enough and the challenge appears with in
reach, people enjoy the activity.
VIA - Flow

Signature
strengths: Intrinsic
VIA Flow
Using activities motivation
that involve these
The 24 Character Strengths
 Difference between strengths and virtues

 Two positive psychologists, Martin Seligman (from the University of Pennsylvania) and
Christopher Peterson (the VIA Institute on Character's scientific director), who published
the handbook Character Strengths and Virtues (the "un-Diagnostic and Statistical Manual
of Mental Disorders"), describe six "virtues," or core characteristics that are universally
valued. The six virtues are wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, and
transcendence. The characteristics associated with these virtues are labeled character
"strengths." For example, one person might gain the virtue of wisdom by using the strength
known as curiosity. Another person might gain wisdom through the strength of open-
mindedness and a tendency to see all points of view. Each of the six virtues has a set of
character strengths associated with it. Strengths are less abstract than virtues, and are often
the characteristics people use to talk about the qualities that differentiate one person from
another. (Positive personality)
Flow across settings

 Flow in relationships?
 Flow in family?
 Flow at work/institute/organisations?
Work Family Flow
 Work Family Flow begins with increased well-being because we know from positive psychology that
happy people are more effective and productive at work, and they develop better relationships with
colleagues, partners and their children.
 When people learn empirically validated tools to increase their well-being, including practicing
gratitude (Emmons, 2007), using optimism as a psychological strategy (Seligman, 2004),
experiencing flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990), savoring (Bryant & Veroff, 2007) and using their
signature strengths (Peterson & Seligman, 2004), individuals benefit, and organizations improve
their bottom line.
 So instead of putting ‘work family balance’ on the top of your wish list, aim for Work Family Flow.
Begin with your own well-being, and watch the benefits flow to your work and your home life. Then
it won’t be about where you spend your time, but how well you spend your time.